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From The Editor

What We Cannot Afford

Last week, we hosted our tenth
anniversary Fearless Caregiver Conference. I
have to say it was a doozey. We had experts on
social security, long term care, and hospice on the
panel and hundreds of family caregivers in the
audience. It was a packed house of information,
advice and sharing topped off with a proclamation
from the honorable Lois Wexler, Mayor of Broward
Country, Florida and a caregiver advocate,
officially noting the date as Fearless Caregiver
Day. Dr. Jamie Huysman, an old friend and
Co-founder of the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation
shared his thoughts on caregivers as first
responders, and we honored our 2008 Caregiver
Friendly Award winners.

As any event, there is always one moment which
literally took the breath away from everyone in attendance. That
moment came when a caregiver stood to talk with Florida's
Secretary of Elder Affairs, Douglas Beach. She spoke of the
times when she would bring her 54 year old daughter to the
hospital. When the hospital staff would realize that that
the family was dealing with Alzheimer's care, they would address
her daughter and ignore the caregiver who stood before us. The
only problem with that situation was that it was the daughter
and not her mother who was living with Alzheimer's disease.
She went on to say " If anything happened to me, there would be
absolutely no one to care for my daughter, so I cannot afford to
die." It took many moments before anyone in that
conference hall remembered to start breathing again.

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Caring for a loved one requires walking a fine line. We
want our loved one to maintain as much freedom as
possible while staying as safe as possible. ...Continued

Carenotes

I am interested in how difficult it is to cruise, travel both in and out of the country with someone on oxygen.

My husband needs it 24/7 and at night with his cpap. When
at home he uses liquid oxygen when we are outside of the home and in the house we have the electric concentrators. When we fly we rent the INOGEN which airline's accept. These run on our current not on any foreign current.
What would we use instead of liquid oxygen when we
are away from the place we stay? How difficult is it to travel with someone on oxygen? Even on a ship when we would go out of our cabin what kind of oxygen would he use? With liquid he can be away for hours and not need a refill. I am always being negative to any kind of extensive travel because of these issues as I have to do everything and worry about all these things if we should travel.
That is not to say we just stay at home we do not. We fly from the east coast to the west 2
times a year and have homes in both places so that all the oxygen equipment is there for us. We went on a day's trip once but I had to take all kinds of bullets of oxygen which is cumbersome and hard to do.

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